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The first thing Liz’s parents taught her was to hide.
Hiding was how to stay alive with the roving bands of higher Divinities who came through their little planet, ruthlessly killing anyone and sometimes everyone they encountered.
So, they stuck to the places without monster spawners and rarely, if ever, entered a town or village.
Not that those places lasted long.
Liz remembered half a dozen places that had once been thriving cities with thousands of people but were now little more than holes in the ground at best, and poisonous remains that corrupted the land around them at worst.
She was nine when she asked why this was happening, and twelve when her parents actually answered her.
They called it Armageddon. The end of times.
The Immortal Ever Generous and Benevolent God King had been killed by the traitors, while the Ministers had revolted, and the Great Wars had started.
Her father said that the Glorious Everlasting Kingdom of Prosperity was eating itself alive as factions rose and fought for power.
The few other small groups they interacted with had a much simpler name for it.
The Shattering.
The shattering of their way of life. The shattering of everything they knew. The shattering of the stability they once had.
Liz felt the name was apt, even if she was too young to remember the few years of life she had lived before the God King’s death.
All she knew was fear, hiding, and the threat of death being ever present.
When she was thirteen, her parents brought her to a monster spawner and took her inside.
There, they subdued the first monster and had her drive a blade into its chest.
It was a bloody event, as she missed the heart and the deer with metal antlers struggled furiously.
Liz thought it was her fear at first, but quickly came to realize that she had a connection with the blood seeping from the monster before her. With a thought, it rushed into her, and she felt bloated like the one time she ate an entire rabbit on her own.
Except, this came with a rush of power, rather than sleepiness.
It took some trial and error with her parents’ help, but they learned she had the ability to absorb blood to empower herself, sacrificing the lifeblood of her foes for strength.
With that, she was able to kill beasts that were two full Mortal Realms higher than herself.
When she reached the 3rd Mortal Shedding, they learned what her second Blessing was.
Blood sacrificed to her was stronger and lasted longer.
Life seemed to settle down for a period of time, but then they came.
The invaders.
They called themselves the Liberators of the Fallen, but Liz and the other inhabitants of their homeworld knew them for what they really were.
Monsters in human flesh.
They took whatever they wanted, be it people for pleasure, the little food that they managed to gather, or the very clothes off their backs.
They also monopolized the monster spawners, allowing no one who hadn’t submitted to them to enter their depths.
Liz’s parents and a few others had a plan. They decided enough was enough and intended to enter a monster spawner and never come out. They would set up a new life away from everything else.
It was a decision that they knew would doom them, which is why they hadn’t wanted to do so before. They had held out hope that things would get better, but now, they saw the truth. Nothing would get better. Only worse.
So, as the sentiment grew and spread through the scattered remains of the survivors, they decided to gather what supplies they could and then enter the monster spawner.
The decision of which monster spawner to enter was not something easily decided, and everyone had an opinion, but in the end, one was chosen that they felt could sustain them for at least two hundred years.
A long time for those in the lower Mortal Realm, but nothing for those above the 8th Shedding.
Their next challenge was gathering what remaining domesticated livestock they had that wasn’t under the control of the invaders.
Things seemed to be going well with their planning, and before long, they had five thousand families ready to move.
Liz and everyone else expected disaster to strike, and they were right.
The Liberators of the Fallen had gotten wind of their plans and ambushed them right as they were going to enter the monster spawner.
Liz and her family were in the rear, as some of the stronger fighters, and they fought with everything they had.
It wouldn’t have been enough if the Liberators of the Fallen hadn’t been both arrogant and conceited in their abilities.
Instead of attacking them with their 1st Immortals, they sent their Junior Liberators, conscripts from the few villages and cities which had lasted to this point and were firmly under their control. Even as Liz battled with tendrils of blood and with her obsidian horn blade, she saw the Immortals laughing and jeering at their attempts at resistance.
Still, they fought and retreated into the monster spawner, and it must have been the last blessing of The Immortal Ever Generous and Benevolent God King because, against all odds, they made it.
Most of them did, at least.
There was only so much time before a monster spawner changed its world. Everyone knew that, and they had planned around that very scenario and practiced moving quickly through narrow gaps while avoiding clogging the entrance.
But things changed when they were forced into a fighting retreat.
Liz liked to think that they had done well. When the last three dozen of them entered the monster spawner, they were met with emptiness.
The forest was as they expected, but their friends and family were gone. Separated by the rules of the monster spawner and its separate worlds.
Liz and the other Low Mortals fell into depression for a time, but that didn’t last.
It couldn’t.
They were still in a monster spawner six Sheddings stronger than themselves, and only seven out of their numbers had their First Understanding.
They wanted to leave the monster spawner but knew that leaving so soon would only mean their death when they encountered the Liberators of the Fallen troops.
So, they fought the monsters because what other choice was there?
It was there that for the first time, Liz learned just how useful blood could be, and the many ways her Blessing could be used.
Blood was life.
It was death.
It was healing and decay.
It was the bonds between comrades in arms.
It was the ties between brothers and sisters.
Blood was her.
Her first Understanding was born of the blood of monsters and her companions.
Nine months.
It took them nine months to clear the monster spawner of anything dangerous, nine months filled with blood and danger, but they learned and grew during that span.
- Writer
